A public panel discussion, "The Object in Transition: Contemporary Voices," organized as part of the GCI's Conservation Matters lecture series, opened the conference. Elisabeth Sussman from the Whitney Museum of American Art served as moderator for a discussion among artists Rachel Harrison, Paul McCarthy, and Doris Salcedo and conservator Christian Scheidemann, in which they described the often complex production processes of their art, the fleeting nature of some of the materials they use, and the implications for the long-term survival of their work.

The two-day conference for professionals in the field included case studies debating the conservation issues presented by specific works of art, dialogues among conservators and art historians on the interdisciplinary study of particular artists, and general panel discussions.

Two sections of Eva Hesse's Expanded Expansion and a material mock-up (left) of a section of the same work on display at the Getty Museum as part of the "Object In Transition" conference. Photo: John Kiffe.

Interdisciplinary studies were presented on artists Bruce Nauman and Barnett Newman, and panels on issues such as "The Painted Surface," "Artist's Voice: History's Claim," and the "Life and Death of Objects" allowed for significant discourse on topics brought up during the conference.

Many of the objects discussed during the conference were on display in the J. Paul Getty Museum for conference attendees to examine, including two sections of Eva Hesse's Expanded Expansion from the Guggenheim Museum in New York; three related paintings by David Novros, two from the Menil Collection in Houston and one from the Museum of Modern Art in New York; a rejected Barnett Newman study from the Harvard University Art Museums, and a maquette for Roy Lichtenstein's Three Brushstrokes. In addition, a material mock-up of a section of Expanded Expansion was on display for comparison.

In order to provide colleagues unable to attend with a lasting record of the meeting, all of the sessions of this two-day conference were recorded in video. These videos are available for viewing online on the Getty Web site.